EAST HARTFORD >> When Billy Crocker brought his Villanova defensive team into Rentschler Field for the 2015 season opener, he was more focused on the talents and tendencies of UConn’s offensive players.

Since the Waterford native was hired as the Huskies’ defensive coordinator, Crocker has turned his attention to the other side of the ball. He has been popping in footage of the players he will be coaching, and Crocker is rather encouraged by what he will be working with.

UConn has four returning players with at least 100 career tackles. Among American Athletic Conference teams, only South Florida has more with five 100-tackle returnees. The Huskies would have been at five as well had Luke Carrezola, who has 98 career stops, not missed six games during the 2014 season.

When the Huskies take the field for the Aug. 31 season opener against Holy Cross, it is possible that Crocker’s defensive unit could feature 10 senior starters.

“It is a really solid senior class that will provide some leadership,” Crocker said. “I talked to those guys and they are going to be pied pipers, if you go they will follow. There are some young guys, a lot of them redshirted last year so we don’t know what they are yet so we have to do a good job with our offseason workouts and evaluate them, get them into spring practice. The big part about spring practice is not necessarily installing our entire scheme because a big part of spring will be to evaluate for us, who are those guys.”

Some of the known commodities on the defense include senior defensive back Jamar Summers, who leads all AAC returning players with 11 interceptions, senior linebacker Junior Joseph, whose 215 career tackles are the second most among active AAC players. Unofficially, there are nine returning conference players with at least nine career sacks headlined by the UConn trio of Folorunso Fatukasi, Luke Carrezola and Cole Ormsby.

Some of the roles for the returning players could be changing. Carrezola was listed as a linebacker in former head coach Bob Diaco’s defensive system, but in the recently posted 2017 roster, he is now a defensive lineman. What’s interesting about that is that classmate Cam Stapleton was used in a similar way as Carrezola, yet he is still considered to be a linebacker.

“We went all the film and watched those guys,” Crocker said. “Some of those guys are maybe going to be D Ends, we didn’t want to move everybody at once. We are going to adjust to the way we have to adjust to fit the current personnel.”

Crocker used a base defense with three defensive linemen, three linebackers and five defensive backs. Other than Summers and Vanderbilt transfer Tre Bell, UConn’s defensive backs don’t have an abundance of game action. Cornerback John Robinson saw some time as a redshirt freshmen while there were mixed results for safeties Brice McAllister and Tony Watkins. Based on experience, those would be the five top defensive backs. The rest of the defensive backs on the roster have a combined total of four career tackles. Crocker said he isn’t going to stubbornly stick to a 3-3-5 scheme if playing an additional linebacker or defensive lineman gives the 2017 defense a better chance for success.

“If we have to not do something that I’ve done (at Villanova), we will have to fit what we have,” Crocker said. “We have to play to the strengths. Until we start getting all the pieces in place we’ll have to juggle around a little bit to make everything fit.”

While Lashlee has opted to do most of his evaluation during spring practice, Crocker has been more willing to break down game tape to see what he has to work with. One of the things he was drawn to was seeing which players still gave maximum effort even as the Huskies were stumbling to one blowout loss to another down the stretch a season ago.

“Number one is production, who is making the plays, who seems to be doing their job, their assignment not knowing necessarily what they are being coached to do,” Crocker said. “I am looking for the guys who are playing hard and being physical. Those are probably the biggest things that I’ve looked at on their film. It is a huge part and is something I have already addressed with the defensive guys is that we have to have the attitude of it doesn’t matter when we get on the field, how we get on the field, it matters how we get off the field. We can’t concern ourselves with what is going on over there (on offense), we have to concern ourselves with what our job is.”

Five defensive players are rated in the top 30 at their position in the NFL Draft Scout 2018 database more than any other team in the conference. Yet, even with all of that talent the UConn defense gave up more long drives and created fewer turnovers than in the previous season.

Crocker’s scheme will be an aggressive one. The days of Diaco’s bend but don’t break defense are over. The style of play might be closer to what Don Brown ran when he was UConn’s defensive coordinator than what Diaco and Anthony Poindexter put together. Crocker knows there will be some growing pains, but he is ready for the challenge.

“If I didn’t think I could do it, I wouldn’t have come,” Crocker said. “I think with Coach being in charge, we are going to get the right pieces to get this thing going in the right direction.”